“The only way to recoup our spiritual losses is to go back to the cause of them and make such corrections as the truth warrants. The decline of the knowledge of the holy has brought on our troubles. A rediscovery of the majesty of God will go a long way toward curing them” (A. W. Tozer). In this one statement Tozer diagnoses the trouble and prescribes the cure for the ills of the Church in his day. In my opinion, as a true diagnosis and a true prescription of Scripture, it is also true for today. The Church will never really be the Church no matter what it does apart from this prescription. There is no power in the Church and no real obedience in the Church apart from the rediscovery (or discovery to begin with) of the majesty and glory of God. Until that happens, men will go to a building and do something but it will not be proclaiming the excellencies of God which is the purpose of the Church. Even if they try to proclaim His excellencies, yet without a sense of His majesty it is empty.
The Church must repent of its methodologies that are not consistent with a God-centered practice (idolatry) and return to God just as the Israelites needed to repent of its idolatries and return to God. Worship is not just a part of the service where singing with a religious content occurs, but true worship is from the inner man and is a loving adoration of God. It is not enough just to sing about religious subjects and perhaps with great feeling, because one can have great feeling about heresy if the tune is catchy enough. People can worship themselves in the time of singing as they sing about how much God loves them and are really thinking only of themselves. People can worship themselves as they “get into” the song and really be into the tune and just be enjoying the feelings. There can be blatant idolatry during the “worship time” if a low view of God is being worshipped. Worship is not just a time for singing; it can be a time of horrible idolatry as well. This can happen within orthodox circles as well.
Worship is really the adoration of the heart. But we must be careful and remember that the adoration in the heart must be for God. We must be even more careful and realize that we must have the truth of God to have worship. Lastly, we must know that it must be the truth of God and the adoration of His majesty in the heart for there to be true worship (John 4:22-24; Heb 12:28-29; Isa 66: 1-5). Unless the Church as a whole and the individual churches return to this biblical idea of worship, the Church will continue to regress. The Church must begin to seek God as the cure for its ills, but even more it must do this if it loves God in reality. The Church might be so drunk with its success in other areas that it does not want God to come along and “ruin” it. What would happen if churches lost many of their members? They would think that something was wrong with the pastor. But what has happened now that God is no longer in our churches? We are carrying on quite nicely without Him, or so we think. This is simply a sign that we are so hardened in heart that we have not noticed the absence of God and wouldn’t know how to act if He visited us. Remember how people treated Christ when He came and visited His own (John 1:1-11).
As Tozer points out, “A rediscovery of the majesty of God will go a long way toward curing them” (the troubles of the Church). Now this sounds like a simple answer. All we have to do is for the Church to rediscover the majesty of God and all our troubles will be over. It is not quite that simple. The real ills of the Church will begin to be cured, but there would be a lot of trouble in the process. Traditions, practices, and ways of thinking about God would have to be thrown out of the window when they are seen to be as salt that has lost its saltiness. The rediscovery of the majesty of God as the root issue is the only real answer for the Church, but this has ramifications for everything in the Church. Many will not like it.
While there are probably simple books out there on how to rediscover God, there is no simple or easy way to do this. The rediscovery of the majesty of God will cost the Church and all the people who try it everything. As Scripture sets out in II Chronicles 7:14, there is a path to seeking the face of God. It begins with humility and includes true repentance. As Isaiah 6 shows us, to see God in His glory is to see our sin and to respond with a “woe is me.” We can also look at I Peter 5:5 which shows us that God is opposed to the proud and gives grace to the humble. We can look at Luke 9 and 14 which describe what self-denial is needed to follow Christ. Exodus 33:13-18 opens up a way of crying out to God to see His glory. If all these are elements of what the Church needs to do, then it is easily seen that there is no easy way to rediscover God. Compounding the issue for those who want things to be easy is that God is sovereign and these things are at His good pleasure. We will try to deal with these issues in future blogs.
God Loves... Himself 
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